I got the timeline back in October, before the official release. It felt weird that not all my friends could view it. Only those who also had the timeline at the time could see my timeline, while others saw my old page.
Nevertheless, I liked timeline. It was creative and revolutionary as your whole lives can now be stored on the internet with easy access to each of your posts. I remember that once I had to look up a post I made about a year ago. I kept scrolling downwards, but still could not find it. After I obtained timeline, I easily clicked on 2010 and found the post. It was that simple.
But at the same time, I felt a little awkward. I thought to myself, when timeline becomes available to everyone, people would be able to view all my posts, from the very beginning. This was not a good thing because there were some things that I did not want my new friends to see. But the timeline gave them complete access.
This didn’t become a very huge issue for me since I deleted all the unwanted posts before timeline was released. And I was happy to know that Facebook gave a time of 7 days to remove all your unwanted content before they allowed your timelines to be visible. Still, for some, timeline enables ‘next-level stalking’.
The addition of cover photos is a great concept. In the old profile layout, there were 5 small pictures visible on top. Soon, third party websites allowed profile banners to be created. It was a great idea, and Facebook enhanced that with cover photos which are basically a larger versions of profile banners. This makes your profile unique and distinguishes it from others.
I do have some issues with timeline though. First of all, my relatives are now hidden. Before timeline was introduced, relatives used to be visible on the left side. Now, they aren’t visible at all. At the same time, there is also a positive point involved: my friends are no longer visible on the side. I used to consider it a nuisance for my friend list to be exposed on my profile. Good for me, timeline doesn’t make the same mistake. To view someone’s friends in timeline, you need to click a separate box.
The second, and last, issue I have with timeline is the feature which groups my YouTube videos together. I have turned on ‘auto-share’ on YouTube so that whenever I “like”, “favorite” or “comment” on a video, it automatically posts it to Facebook. In the old profile, each video was individually shown. After the change, the videos are now grouped together in the timeline.
Despite these two negative aspects of the timeline, it is a great improvement over the old layout.
I had a friend who hated the timeline when it came out. But after he saw my profile and the new features, he loved it and immediately switched to it. However, I still have a few friends who are unwilling to switch to timeline. They simply don’t want to give it a chance. And they have no idea what they’re missing.
I speak directly to the haters now: Did you not hate your current profile back when it first came out? And now, if you were asked to switch back to the old layout, you would disagree to do so. The point is, you don’t like change, but when you’re forced to accept it, you begin to comprehend it’s potential, and you don’t want to go back. Hence, I would recommend giving Timeline a chance before Facebook forces you to accept it. It’ll save you the whining for some time.
So, what do you think of the timeline so far? Let me know in the comments below.
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